Kimono
by azzami
Summary: He never had much luck when it concerns his health. Kaidoh centric


The scary, evil, bad-tempered softie of Seigaku's tennis team has always been a beloved character of mine.

* * *

When Kaidoh was a child, he never had any good luck concerning his body. He would always have the runny nose, high fevers causing his face to turn and flush red and the bone-deep pain that racked through his body when the rain god decided to spill a cup of sake. Most of the time in his first few years of childhood was spent huddled in a cold white bed in a stinky, harsh place. Kaidoh Kaoru had absolutely hated that.

When Kaidoh was a child, he would sit on a narrow windowsill that pressed uncomfortably against his bones and he would peer out through the shiny, pretty windowpanes and gaze out onto the dusty, dirty streets below. He would lean himself against the cold flat calmness and stare, breath rattling harshly in and out of him as he sucked in little short gasps of air. He had never wanted to make that weird hissing sound when he exhaled, but it had somehow stuck with him when he was sick and ill.

So as per tradition, as a last resort, his mother had gone somewhere one day and came back with a light green kimono. She had dropped down on her knees behind him and tugged the obi tightly, fussing over him and smoothing shaking fingers over warm cloth and rubbing his hair. Kaidoh could not remember what his mother had whispered to him that day, in little exhalations and mutters, but he was very sure that his kind, pretty mother was telling him to get well soon.

That day, his mother had brought him out for a rare excursion, rare because Kaidoh could never go out for long amounts of time without somehow collapsing. "He is too delicate, that child," Relatives muttered behind half-closed mouths and careful eyes. "Never will amount to anything, I tell you, the way he gets sick. Worse than a girl, that boy. How hard must it be on his parents to be cursed with a little burden like him." And because adults, _all _adults even his nice mother and his good father, think that children were stupid, they sing it out loud and clear and harsh into Kaidoh's face.

His mother had taken him on the train to a quiet, gentle place, with the smell of wood and incense and rain and water and peace looping and curving and arching themselves around him. And for a moment, he had felt clean and straight, without the bone-pain and the red fever burrowing angry holes into him. Kaidoh had burned some incense, laughing out loud at how the pretty smoke curved and wound its way into the pale blue sky, and had told his mother happily, "Mama, we're sending words to the gods with these, aren't we?"

Kaidoh was too young to see the moment of pain that struck into his mother's face, the way her fingers jerked and trembled against his hands for a moment. She had, if Kaidoh remembered correctly, pressed her head against his hair and muttered into it. "That we are doing, Kaoru-chan. See, you must ask the gods for your good health, yes, Kaoru-chan? Like this... You think in your head or you say it out loud for them to hear, and the smoke carries your voice up to the sky, Kaoru..."

Kaidoh remembered that he had clasped little hands around the incense and mumbled, "Can you please make me better so my mummy and my papa wouldn't get laughed by other people? Thank you!"

That day, his mother had carried him in his light green kimono to many, many places. She had brought him to a gigantic place that reminded him way too much of the sticky, harsh white place and he had wept in panic when he thought she was bringing him there again. His mother had shushed him and took a train to another big, big place, so very, very different from the cool, gentle place or the gigantic angry place before, filled with snorts and grunts and yells and chatter. It was stinky too. But in a good way, he had thought.

She had allowed him to play with furry, fluffy things that were almost as tall as him and he was happy that he was taller than them. But later, Kaidoh had felt slightly sick when he remembered that feeling, and he had turned back, dragging his astonished mother with him to say sorry to the furry things that were also stinky, but in a very, _very _good stinky way. When they had ended that day, Kaidoh had felt faintly glad that he had apologised to the furry things, because he knew, that he could not have swallowed his rice if he had not said sorry to them.

Kaidoh thinks that, some long day when the sun draws the shadows out and the shop windows were closed and quiet, he would walk past these places again.

* * *

END. 

review drill xD Thanks very much!


End file.
